The Impoundment Act of 1974 was passed with strong bipartisan support in the pre-polarization era. It was designed to reassert congressional control over the budget, while ac acknowledging there might be circumstances in which Presidents had good reasons not to spend money Congress had appropriated. The President can propose funding that he wants to rescind; Congress then has a fixed time period in which it can either approve or fail to approve the President’s request.

In the pre-polarization era, Congress no doubt assumed that Congress would exert independent judgment about any rescission request and that there would be some degree of bipartisan judgment about whether to approve or reject such a request. But we have now seen in the era of polarization and unified government that one party can approve a rescission request from the same party President. And one fallout from this might be that it will make putting together bipartisan deals to pass an actual budget that much harder. With unified government and polarized parties, rescission become like a line-item presidential veto over spending. If any rescission request by a President of the same party as the party that controls the House and Senate will be approved, that is the practical effect.

That would destabilize bipartisan deals over the budget. If one party can unwind that deal during unified government, the other party cannot have confidence the terms of the deal will stick. This would be an ironic, unintended consequence of legislation enacted in a non-polarized era, designed to reassert congressional control over the executive, that is now being applied in our polarized era.